My favorite sage once told me "better look out" else you won't "see" :-) This is a wanderer's wanderlust !!, an attempt to navigate through the omnipresent urban blindness, albeit without any kind compass, and yet, inadvertently and magically, stumble upon the ever elusive truth.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

I know the seers have all recommended against it, though the Gods themselves are known to have it – the doctors believe it is poison, and all the world along they believe it is sin – what am I talking about here? Alcohol.

(Or for that matter any intoxicant, including our plain, simple and overtly abused friend the Tobacco. When I use the word “Alcohol” in this post, it should be construed to mean all of the above.)

Alcohol to me does a very strange thing. It shows me a mirror, within the throes of whose reflection I tend to see my deepest flaws and the greatest of my desires. I can clearly see that Alcohol has the influence of playing both Rahu (creating delusion) and Ketu (creating insight or release) from a Vedic viewpoint. It definitely does that to me.

Within its spell, I have seen, and I say this quite literally, both the Demon and the Seer. In its throes, I find a form of release (Ketu) that I have only vicariously experienced in Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception.

I don’t do Alcohol enough, probably about 5 days out of a year – and yet I sometimes feel that I have it in me to fall back on this poison, and in some sense, it can definitely become a poison for me. Till then, I shall keep rediscovering my inner recesses.

"My kick the bucket" list

** 1. Scale Everest.** 2. Bike down to Leh3. Publish a work of fiction.** 4. Run a 42k Marathon.5. Do a 3 month Vipaasna course6. Motor down to Leh7. Visit the Golden Temple8. Watch a Roger Waters Concert9. Write a book of poems (not necessarily publish)

(** refers to items which the defeatist in me feels I shall never achieve.....)